Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Three Common Lifestyle Issues in Recovery

Three Common Lifestyle Issues in Recovery

Addiction and substance abuse create turmoil in every area of our lives. When it’s all said and done, and we’re finally able to seek help for drugs or alcohol, the residual damage caused by our active substance abuse is still very much a reality with which we have to contend. Part of the recovery process is rebuilding our lives and endeavoring to get back what we lost while in the throes of substance abuse. The extent to which our lifestyles suffer is contingent upon our history of drug or alcohol use. However, there are a few common areas that tend to take the most direct hits.

Our Careers

Our colleagues are often the first to bear witness to our unraveling. Once our professional performance begins declining due to our substance abuse, it’s often only a matter of time before our substance abuse derails everything we’ve worked for. To make matters worse, getting our jobs back after we leave treatment is rarely an option. We can start to get our careers back on track when we feel we’re emotionally ready to resume our professional obligations and workload.

Our Relationships with Our Families

Families are often hit hardest by addiction. They have to sit by and bare witness to the people they love destroy themselves with drugs and alcohol. It’s important that we begin repairing our relationships right after we get clean, even it’s during our rehab programs. They will, in all likelihood, be our chief means of support as endeavor to move past the initial stages of recovery and we can afford to alienate those closest to us. This is why so many quality treatment programs offer family programs.

Our Savings

Addiction is expensive, any way you slice it. There are many who spend thousands of dollars over the course decades feeding their habit. When they leave treatment, they discover they have very little or no money left. This problem is reparable over time, as we transition back into our careers. In the mean time, it’s important to stick with our recovery plans and everything else will fall into place.

Lifestyle damage is an unavoidable part of addiction. We can’t hope to simply engage in problematic drug and alcohol use with no consequences to our everyday lives. The trick is to gather all of the strength and focus what we can during recovery so we can begin to rebuild and reclaim our lives.